Arkansas Politics / Crime / Health
Report: diverting mentally ill criminals away from jails and prisons could save state $140 million per year

today calling for the state to invest in mental-health crisis centers, where criminal offenders with mental health issues would get treatment, rather than simply being incarcerated.

The report, based on programs in San Antonio, Oklahoma, Georgia, New Mexico and Oregon, projects the crisis centers would save the state $140 million per year. The diversion would lead to less recidivism, said Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Public Policy Panel.

"A lot of the people that we’re currently having to pay for in system could be treated with Medicaid dollars, saving the state money while providing them better health outcomes," Kopsky said. "These programs also make the community safer because they allow the police to focus on the people who’re true threats to the community."

Kopsky said the Panel supported a bill in the 90th Arkansas General Assembly that would have provided pilot funding for mental health crisis centers. The compromise measure that passed, the Criminal Justice Reform Act, instead created the Behavioral Health Treatment Access Task Force to study the issue. The Panel presented this report to the task force today.

“The initial findings are so overwhelmingly positive Arkansas must follow up with more detailed analysis,” Kopsky said in a statement. “It is clear that failing to meet the needs of people with mental illness in an appropriate setting will result in larger drains on the state budget, less humane outcomes for people with mental illness and less public safety.”

In 2017, teenagers committed to rehabilitative treatment at two South Arkansas juvenile lockups did not receive basic hygiene and clothing supplies and lived in wretched conditions.

A new lawsuit challenging the state’s photo ID law, Bart Hester vs. the humanities, signs of a threat to governors school, big bills for the state Supreme Court and Clarke Tucker making a run for Congress — all covered on this week's podcast.

Readers also liked…

The Arkansas highway department's representative on the Metroplan board of directors told the board today that the department is requesting an exception to the planning agency's cap on six lanes for its 30 Crossing project to widen Interstate 30 from six to 10 (and more) lanes.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has denied a new permit for the C&H Hog Farms' concentrated animal feeding operation near Mount Judea (Newton County). This is a big and somewhat surprising victory for critics who have viewed C&H's large-scale pig farm and the pig waste it generates as an existential threat to the Buffalo National River.

Arkansans for Compassionate Care, the group behind the first medical marijuana initiative to qualify for the ballot, has responded sharply to yesterday's statement by the Arkansas Health Department that it opposes legal medical use of marijuana.

by Max Brantley

Jul 13, 2016

Most Shared

A rediscovered violin concerto brings an oft-forgotten composer into the limelight.

My colleagues John Ray and Jesse Bacon and I estimate, in the first analysis of its kind for the 2018 election season, that the president's waning popularity isn't limited to coastal cities and states. The erosion of his electoral coalition has spread to The Natural State, extending far beyond the college towns and urban centers that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. From El Dorado to Sherwood, Fayetteville to Hot Springs, the president's approval rating is waning.

Despite fierce protests from disabled people, the U.S. House voted today, mostly on party lines, to make it harder to sue businesses for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Of course Arkansas congressmen were on the wrong side.